


I'd Give All My Tomorrows

by seekingsquake



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Blow Jobs, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Nightmares, mentions of drug use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-07-23 00:02:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7458778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingsquake/pseuds/seekingsquake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fills for this year's #sciencebrosweek, hosted over on tumblr.</p>
<p>Day One: Yesterday<br/>Maybe the past Tony wishes they had is better than the one they got, and the future he imagines for them is impossible in this lifetime, but his present is pretty damn good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Love Like Mine

#  July 11: Yesterday

**Love Like Mine**

“What the fuck happened to your face?” Bruce ducks his head, but Tony’s hands are fast and persistent. He reaches for Bruce surely, turning Bruce’s face back towards him without so much as a thought for personal space. His breath catches in his throat when he gets a good look at the black bloom of a bruise mapped out on Bruce’s skin. It’s wrapped in a thick band around his throat, reaching up over the left side of his jaw to touch him on the swell of his cheek right under his eye. 

Bruce shudders under Tony’s touch, but he still manages a huff of near-laughter. He kisses Tony softly, swallows around the lump in his throat that forms whenever he thinks about how much Tony loves him, winces when swallowing hurts. “I’m okay,” he whispers against Tony’s skin. “I got in a good couple ‘a hits before he knocked me out.” He says it like it’s a victory.

Tony doesn’t know how Bruce never seems angry. Tony’s fucking angry. Tony wants to burn the whole world to the ground and build a safe place for Bruce from the ashes. When Bruce leaves, when he slinks back home to withstand another round of battering from his fuck-up of a father, Tony with drive himself out to the lookout and scream at the sky and throw things from the ledge into the ocean. He’ll watch things break on the rocks below him and be swept out to sea, and maybe he’ll be so angry he’ll cry. But while he’s got Bruce here, he’ll be calm. Because God knows that Bruce doesn’t need any more men in his life screaming and breaking shit just for the sake of being angry.

*

When Brian Banner is finally carted off to some sort of intensive prison hospital, Bruce is shuffled into the foster system. His Uncle Morris and Aunt Elaine refuse to take him, and no one can even find his Aunt Susan. He has no other family. He’s kept in a group home on the East End, and after school on the days that he can, Tony drives out there to see him. They both know that teenage boys don’t get adopted. They both know that his family’s history has been blasted all over the local news stations and papers. Though children under the age of nineteen are never supposed to be named in news reports, someone leaked the initial police report and once it’s out there you can’t take it back. Nobody’s gonna want a kid whose dad is a murderer.

Bruce is seventeen. He’ll age out of the system before anyone decides to take care of him, and Tony can’t... He can’t...

He lies awake at night, thinking about Bruce never having anyone to look out for him, and he can never think of anything that he hates more. So he drives out whenever he can and he holds Bruce long and hard in the back seat of his car, kisses him gently whenever Bruce will accept it, and does the best he can to make sure that Bruce knows that even though he’s alone, he’s not  _ alone.  _ Tony’s always going to be there.   

*

In his head, they grow old together. Tony opens a mechanic shop in the middle of downtown and Bruce teaches bio and chem classes to high-schoolers and they get married and have a dog and Bruce never worries about being alone for the rest of his life. In his head, they die in their sleep, within minutes of each other, and they’re buried beside each other. Somehow they’re laid to rest near Bruce’s mother, and in the afterlife everything is beautiful and Tony stays near Bruce always. In his head, they share a history that has been decades in the making, and Tony was there every time Bruce needed someone to carry the weight of his world, if only for a few minutes.

But that isn’t the reality of things.

*

Tony wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of quiet and muffled sobbing just off to his right. He rolls over to find Bruce with his face pressed into the pillows, his whole body trembling. It isn’t clear if Bruce is even awake, but Tony runs a hand down his back and then tangles fingers in his hair anyway. 

Bruce sucks in a heaving gasp that’s choked off by the pillow, and then he jerks out from under Tony’s hand and sits up suddenly. His eyes are open but bleary and unfocused, and he reaches out toward Tony’s side of the bed blindly.

“I’m right here,” Tony murmurs, pulling Bruce close and wrapping him in the sheet. “Shh, you’re okay, I’m right here.”

The nightmares are... Well. Tony has nightmares too, bad ones, but they don’t ruin him the same way that Bruce’s do. Bruce’s come out of nowhere after a long stretch of good days, or after really satisfying sex, or after he’s experienced any sort of confidence. He never remembers what happens in them, so really they’re more like the night terrors that children are supposed to grow out of than the nightmares that send adults into therapy, but Tony has a couple of good guesses as to what might plague his lover’s subconscious. He’s read Bruce’s SHIELD file, and Bruce has divulged a couple of very gruesome childhood memories to him on an emotionally fraught occasion or two. Bruce has enough nightmare material to haunt him for a lifetime just from the time before he turned ten. 

It isn’t until after Bruce has calmed down considerably that he says anything. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, his voice still thick with sleep and distress. 

“I’m sorry too,” Tony says back quietly, pressing against Bruce with his whole body.

“Why are you sorry?”

“I don’t know, I just.” He pauses for a moment, kissing behind Bruce’s ear before whispering, “I just wish that I’d known you, when we were kids. Wish I coulda done something. Saved you.”

Bruce huffs, and it isn’t quite a laugh but isn’t quite not one, either. “How? You would have only been a kid, too. It wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“You can’t tell me that having someone around you who loved you wouldn’t have made a difference. You can’t tell me that. I know you, Bruce. I see you. All you’ve ever needed was someone to just. Just. Fuck. All you ever needed was someone to put you first. I just wish it coulda been me. I wish that you’d always had me to do that for you. “

“It doesn’t matter,” Bruce insists, but there are tears in his eyes. He kisses Tony soundly. “Thirty years ago doesn’t matter. Even yesterday doesn’t matter. I have you now. Right? You do that for me now. Right? Tony? Tony?”

“Shh, yeah. You have me now. And tomorrow. And the day after that. It’s okay. I’ve got you, Bruce. You’ve got me. We’re okay.”

And maybe yesterday doesn’t matter to Bruce, but it still matters to Tony. He doesn’t close his eyes again until he’s sure Bruce is sound asleep, and when he finally drifts off again himself he dreams of a whole slew of yesterdays that aren’t theirs, and an infinite set of tomorrows that don’t belong to them.  


	2. i'm the holy water you have been without (i'll be as honest as you let me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Two: Spark  
> The things that Bruce can do with that mouth of his just take Tony right apart, and it doesn't even really have anything to do with the sex.

#  July 12: Spark

**i’m the holy water you have been without (i’ll be as honest as you let me)**

When they kiss, it feels like drowning, like suffocating, like he’ll never breathe again. When Bruce touches him it’s like the skin underneath his hands has been stripped away and replaced with some sort of new, synthetic material. He feels sensitive and overstimulated. He feels like he’s never been touched by anything ever anywhere.

“This is an attack,” Tony croaks hoarsely, and Bruce chuckles low in his throat as he presses Tony harder up against the wall and sucks on his throat. His hands are under Tony’s vest but still not under his shirt, and already Tony can tell that it’s going to be one of those nights. 

If he wants anything, he’s going to have to beg for it.

The thing about Bruce is that it’s never about sex, not really. Sometimes Tony thinks that for Bruce, the orgasms are inconsequential. The important part is the fact that they’re both here, that they’re together, that they’re alive and breathing and laughing. Tony fists his hands in Bruce’s shirt and pulls him closer, as close as he can get him. “Kiss me,” he demands breathlessly. “Kiss my mouth. C’mon. C’mere. Bruce.”

Bruce likes to make him beg, but he doesn’t like to keep him waiting. He swallows any other words Tony might have said in a kiss that’s desperate and impatient. He frames Tony’s face in his hands and his left leg slips between Tony’s thighs. But even as they kiss, Tony’s still trying to talk around Bruce’s lips, around Bruce’s tongue in his mouth. “Upstairs. Upstairs. The bed. Bruce. Fuck, c’mon. Babe. Babe.” Bruce only stops kissing him when Tony nips his tongue, bites just this side of too hard.

“Okay, okay, upstairs. Go. Go on.”

Tony laughs, and it feels like sunlight on Bruce’s skin. “Wanna walk behind me?” He waggles his eyebrows, and it’s ridiculous, and Bruce plants a sloppy kiss on his forehead.

“So what if I do?”

It’s never been like this before, never been a mood that could shift from heavy to sexy to lighthearted in the blink of an eye. Not with other people. Bruce has never felt so versatile or so vulnerable in his adult life. He’s never felt this cherished ever. Tony pushes them away from the wall and then leads them down the hall, and he never once takes his hands off Bruce. They’re in his hair, under his clothes, in his pants pockets, tugging on his belt loops. Tony’s hands flit over him before landing squarely on his ass and dragging him along like that. “Well,” he mutters as he kisses Bruce’s jaw, then nips at the collar of his shirt, “I’d rather keep my hands on yours than let you just ogle mine.”

“Is that supposed to make me complain?”

“You’re not going to?”

Bruce’s hands, still on Tony’s face, almost tremble. “I could never complain about your hands on me.”

It’s things like that that make Tony feel like he’s been gutted. Bruce, who has been guarded all his life, who only knows how to run, how to hide, how to lock down his emotions, says these things to him that just. That just. That get right down to the heart of it all, that rip him right open and expose all his soft parts. Tony doesn’t know what to do with all these bloody, sensitive squishy bits, but he knows that he has to protect them. He has to protect Bruce from everything and everyone that could ever want to hurt him. 

Tony doesn’t know what that has to do with sex, except that in this moment those two concepts seem to be tied together in knots. 

He doesn’t even know how they make it up the stairs. He doesn’t know when they get to the bedroom. All he knows is that they’re all over each other, that he can’t even tell which legs are his own, which hands belong to him. He pins Bruce to the bed and goes for his cock instantly, chokes himself on it without second thought and Bruce almost jack knifes up off the bed.

“Tony, fuck.” When Tony slides a hand up his chest and pushes, Bruce eases back against the mattress and forces himself to sag into the blankets. “Shit, Tony. Tony, God, oh my God.”

Tony knows that he’s good at this, but being good at this has never made him feel as good as turning Bruce incoherent does. He’s beginning to think that knowing Bruce earlier in his life would have really helped his self esteem issues. He’s beginning to think that all the years he never loved Bruce were a waste of everyone’s time. It feels like coming home when he feels Bruce’s hands slide into his hair, cup his skull and very gently adjust the angle that he’s bobbing on. Getting Bruce to take what he wants in any capacity at all has been nothing short of a challenge, but this is progress that Tony’s proud of.

The muscles in Bruce’s thighs are twitching, and Tony knows that sign quite well. He doubles his efforts, presses down on Bruce’s dick until his nose is nestled in the course hair at it’s base. Bruce’s fingers tangle in Tony’s hair, yank for less than a second before letting him go completely, and then Bruce is climaxing with a noise just short of a scream and his hands fisting the blankets around his head.

“What do you want?” Tony murmurs, his lips dragging over Bruce’s inner thigh as he gazes up at him.

Bruce pants and stares at the ceiling for a long, quiet moment before reaching for Tony. “Fuck me,” he whispers. “Until it feels like you’re part of me.”

Bruce might as well have set Tony on fire, the way he lights up. His breath catches and his eyes smoulder and his voice sounds like a match catching flame. “You got it, Babe. You fucking got it.”


	3. All the Rage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Three: Fury  
> If you don't want to talk about important things, don't lock yourself in a car with your best friend after your parents die.

#  July 13: Fury

**All the Rage**

They’ve been driving for hours. When Tony had called, had told Bruce that his parents were dead, Bruce was sad for him but also kind of relieved all at once. Being a Stark was like a prison for Tony, and now, without Howard always looming over him, maybe he’d be able to relax a little, to be himself some. So Bruce had driven down from Boston and picked Tony up, and Tony wanted to go to California, wanted to get away from the east coast and SI and Obadiah. 

Ever since they met at summer science camp when Tony was nine and Bruce was ten, Bruce has never been able to deny Tony anything.

So they’ve been driving for hours. They’ve swapped seats three times, putting Bruce in the passenger’s seat for the second time. They’ve stopped for food once, but haven’t stopped for sleep yet. Tony isn’t tired, and if the cocaine in the glove compartment is any indication, he probably won’t be tired for a while yet. The stereo is playing softly, some CD that was in the back seat of Bruce’s car that may or may not belong to Betty, and Bruce’s eyes are heavy but he’s afraid that if he falls asleep and leaves Tony effectively alone, something bad will happen.

Really, the only thing Tony could do at this point would be crash the car or pull over and walk away, but Bruce isn’t feeling super confident right now and doesn’t know which one of those things would be worse, so. He’s just gonna stay awake. There  _ is  _ cocaine in the glove compartment. He almost reaches for the dime bag, but stops himself at the last second.

“Talk to me,” he murmurs, and Tony only scoffs.

“I don’t have a whole lot I really wanna talk about right now, Big Guy.”

“That’s ‘kay. Just let me hear your voice.”

Tony’s quiet for a long time. Then he says, “Word association?” and when Bruce makes a small sound of agreement Tony starts with, “Fuck.”

“Screw.”

“Mechanics.”

“Robotics.”

“Futurism.”

“Realism.”

“Fatalism.”

“Death.” They’re not really the cheeriest of people at the best of times, really. “That got predictable, didn’t it?” Tony grins, but his eyes look hollow.

Bruce reclines his seat and puts his feet up on the dashboard. It’s his dash anyway, and this way it’ll be tough for either of them to get the drugs. “Maybe, but so what? God.”

“Sham.”

“Happiness.”

“Love.”

Tony bursts out laughing. “You’re an asshole! Don’t you have a girlfriend right now?”

“Yeah, so what?” Bruce pulls a pack of smokes out of his pocket and lights up, the smoke getting pulled out of the car by the wind.

“Why bother dating at all if you associate love with sham?”

“You said happiness.”

“Yeah, but you were still stuck on sham.”

Bruce shrugs. “What about you? What’s the point of doing anything at all if you don’t believe in happiness?”

“Who the fuck told you the purpose of life was to be happy?” Tony asks casually. Then he reaches over with one hand and steals Bruce’s cigarettes. He looks to see how many are left in the pack, and then he just tosses them out the window.

“Tony! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Shit’s gonna kill you one day man, and my parents just fucking offed themselves. I don’t need you doing it too.”

Bruce just stares at Tony for a long time, wide eyed and slack jawed. “Tony,” he murmurs, and it sounds strangled, even to himself, “Your parents were in a car accident. It wasn’t a suicide.”

Tony just snorts, and he’s so angry. His arms are tense and his hands squeeze the steering wheel as if he’d rather be choking something than driving. “How much you wanna bet that dear ol’ dad was fucking sloshed, huh? He fucking killed himself, and he took Mom with him and I swear to god Bruce, if you wanna self destruct that’s your own deal, but you’re not gonna do it while sitting right fucking beside me.”

The cocaine in the glove compartment is Tony’s. Bruce doesn’t say anything, just reaches out and puts a hand on Tony’s arm. It’s hard sometimes, when you’re so angry at the whole world and you’re so used to being shit on, and you’re best friends with someone who feels exactly the same way. Because Bruce wants to disagree, to fight back, to defend himself, but he knows that if he does Tony’s just going to think that it’s because all of a sudden they’re against each other, and they’re not. They could never be. So Bruce doesn’t say anything at all. He just holds on.

“I fucking hate that you hate yourself.”

“Not every smoker hates themselves, Tony, that’s ridiculous.”

“I’m not talking about every smoker. I’m talking about you.”

And Bruce doesn’t want to be the center of attention like this, but he also knows that if he makes Tony the center of attention, Tony will fall apart. The media has been all over him, has scrutinized his every move even more intensely than usual from the very second that everyone got wind of the accident, and he doesn’t need that from his friends. Bruce wants to tell Tony that he isn’t the only person in this car who hates himself, but that isn’t fair either. 

“The only reason,” Tony starts again, and his voice is hard edged and bitter. “The only reason I don’t think love is some made up Hallmark bullshit, the  _ only reason _ , is because I know you. Is because I love you. Okay? I love you. You are my brother, you are the only person in the whole fucking world who actually gives a fuck about me, you are the only person who I give a fuck about anymore, and you hate yourself, and that makes me want to fucking. You don’t even know. You don’t. Even. Know.”

Tony jerks the car over to the side of the freeway, and if they weren’t the only vehicle on the road right now they’d probably be dead. As it is, Tony pulls over, nobody dies, and Tony just slams his fists into the steering wheel over and over before grabbing Bruce roughly by the front of his shirt and slamming their lips together forcefully.

It’s not even a good kiss. It’s just this mashing of faces together, and then Tony’s mostly off him but not completely. The next thing Tony does is kiss Bruce’s forehead, and then he takes a few deep breaths, and then he screams. And Bruce just sits there. Hanging on. Not saying a word.

Tony’s been furious for a long time. Maybe his whole life. And no one’s ever let him express it. So when he pulls back onto the road, Bruce just grabs one of Tony’s hands. He thinks for a second, and then he says, “I love you too,” and squeezes as hard as he can.

“Glad to hear it,” Tony mutters, but he kind of smiles. He sags in his seat a little, looks a little tired, and maybe they’ll pull over the next time they come across a motel or something. 


	4. Right Here, Right Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Four: Momentary  
> Tony glimpses a guy at a club, and one look is never going to be enough.

#  July 14: Momentary

**Right Here, Right Now**

The music is loud as fuck, but that’s the point of places like this. The lighting is mostly strobe with a few spotlights swirling around, and potlights in the ceiling around the bar. If Tony wasn’t so accustomed to looking at Pepper in this kind of setting, he’d lose her in the crowd for sure. As it is, he manages to keep a pretty good eye on her. 

They’ve been here for a few hours, and Rhodey has yet to show up but by this point it’s pretty much guaranteed that he’s on his way. Pepper’s on her fourth or fifth drink and has slipped into the bathroom with a severe faced redhead twice already that Tony’s noticed. He’s pretty sure they’re not doing drugs since Pep always crinkles her nose at him when he talks about his own forays into chemical bliss, which means they have to be having some sort of lesbian sex rendezvous thing. 

Tony hasn’t drank as much as usual, because he’s just got a feeling about tonight. Like he needs to have his wits about him. Like if he gets sloshed he’s gonna miss something important. So he hasn’t been drinking very much, but he’s been dancing his ass off, and he’s high on endorphins and the fact that he’s surrounded by a bunch of smoking hot strangers. His one best friend is getting busy in the bathroom and his other best friend will show up any second, and everything feels good.

The thing is, most of Tony’s recklessness and apparent “downward spiral” and serial dating and drug use etc., etc., is just, like, image. It’s just something that the tabloids threw together after catching him looking haggard a few times, and he lets them do it and doesn’t fight back because he grew up a Stark. He’s seen first hand that if you try to become something other than what they want you to be, they will bury you alive. Tony likes his breathing room, so he doesn’t engage, lets them say what they want, and tries not to let it bother him. Coming to clubs like this is just asking to be called “out of control” in US Weekly tomorrow, but he can’t let himself care. 

He likes the way he can feel the bass in his chest, likes how if he stands still, he can see his own hair tremble with the sound waves. He likes getting lost in the crowd, dancing dirty with people who don’t notice who he is beyond the fact that he’s got a hot, tight body and knows how to work his hips. He likes the way Pep shrieks with laughter when they dance together, her arms around his neck and his up in the air. He likes that he feels free in these places more than he does anywhere else.

The stupid expensive drinks are good, too. And let’s be real, when glitter starts falling from the ceiling he feels like he’s in a fairytale, or a dream, and that’s pretty damn cool. 

He makes his way to the bar and indicates for a drink, and the bartender just slides him something. He doesn’t know what it is but he swallows it down in a couple gulps with practised ease, and when he turns back around it’s like time slows to a crawl, like everyone around him is moving in slow motion, and his eyes catch on, on, on a. On a guy, he supposes, but there’s something about this guy, about the way he moves and the way the crowd just parts around him that seems. It’s. It’s unusual for sure, and a little unreal maybe. And Tony knows he wants to dance with that guy. He wants to be in that guy’s bubble.

But before he can take even a step forward, in the time it takes for him to blink his eyes, time fast forwards and the crowd swallows that guy right up. He’s just. Gone. As if he was never there at all, as if he melted away. 

“Tony!” Suddenly Rhodey is right there, right up against his back, and holy fuck, when did that happen? “You okay? You were zoned right the fuck out.”

“I’m good,” Tony shouts. “I just saw. Someone.”

“Someone we know?”

“No.”

Rhodey laughs, and his hands are giant, warm weights on Tony’s shoulders. “Someone you wanna know.”

“We gotta find Pep,” Tony yells as he turns to finally look Rhodey in the eye. “And you guys gotta help me find that guy.”

Tony knows Rhodey’s face better than he knows his own, almost. He knows that Rhodey wants to tell him that it’ll be tough finding Pepper, let alone one particular stranger. He knows that Rhodey wants him to have another drink and forget it. But Rhodey’s a really good friend, so he just yells back, “Okay,” and drags Tony by the hem of his shirt into the throng of people. 

Rhodey’s plan of attack is to just shove Tony at every guy in the room and make them dance together. It’s not really working out that well in terms of finding that guy, but the dancing’s fun anyway. And then Pepper’s there, and she’s asking the important questions, as always.

“What’s he look like?”

“Uh, kinda like my height, brown hair, curly, and pretty skinny.”

“Tony,” Rhodey sighs, rolling his eyes. “That’s like, almost every dude in this fucking club!”

“Fuck off!” Pepper pushes at Rhodey’s shoulder slightly before turning to Tony and brushing her lips against his ear. “We just need to move systematically, and create a marking system so that we know who we’ve checked out.”

“How do we do that?”

Pepper pulls a tube of lipstick out of her purse and grins.

“Is that even yours? You hate lipstick.”

Her smile is smug as fuck as she draws a line in lipstick down the arm of the guy Tony was last dancing with. The colour is red like blood, and that’s definitely not a colour that Pepper would ever wear, but. That girl from earlier. She would.

And then Tony goes around the club, dragging Pepper behind him. Pepper draws a lipstick line down the arm of every person they come across, and on Rhodey just for shits and giggles. They do this for just over an hour, and Tony’s just thinking that maybe this is a lost cause, that the guy has already left, or that Tony had just made him up or something weird like that. He’s just about to call Pep off, to force Rhodey to drive him home, but when he turns around to grab Rhodey, he looks to his left and then he sees him. That guy.

He can’t explain it, doesn’t understand why he feels this urge, but he  _ has  _ to meet that guy. Tony weaves through the crowd of people, and he can hear Pepper shout something at his back but he doesn’t stop to figure it out, can’t really hear her and doesn’t care enough to pause. He pushes his way past a group of strangers and he’s burning up with it, with the need to be in that guy’s space. He can’t let him get away from him again. 

The guy turns, and he looks, and his eyes lock with Tony’s. And then he’s moving across the floor, toward where Tony is moving toward him, and when they meet in the middle, it’s like. It’s like nobody else exists all of a sudden. He doesn’t do this with strangers. He doesn’t do this without, like, saying something first, but words don’t really make sense to him right now, nothing makes sense except, like. Except. He reaches out, his hands finding this guy’s hips, and the guy just folds himself around Tony. They move together, dancing as if they’ve danced like this with each other before even though Tony knows that they haven’t. Tony would remember seeing this guy. His face is, like, nothing he’s ever seen. It’s serious and beautiful, his lips are bitten and worried but he’s smiling anyway, and there’s just something about him. Tony’d remember.

He doesn’t know when they started kissing, who started kissing whom, but. Y’know. Whatever. It’s like the most natural thing in the world.

“I’m Tony,” he mumbles into this guy’s ear, breathless and unable to help himself and really hoping to get this guy’s number.

“Hi Tony,” he says back, and he’s watching Tony’s mouth and cradling Tony’s neck in his hands.

“Who even are you?”

He kisses Tony before he says anything, soft and sweet and holy fuck. Tony can’t breathe. “Bruce. My name’s Bruce.”

“Tony!” Rhodey is shouting for him, and he turns to try to at least indicate to Rhodey that he’s okay but he can’t see Rhodey anywhere and when he turns back around some girl is dragging Bruce away. 

Bruce flings a look over his shoulder as he’s pulled into the crowd, and he’s grinning like  _ find me again _ . 

Well. Okay. Game on.    


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate this one -.- Sorry guys


	5. Bushwick Blues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Five: Blue  
> First loves are always hard, especially when you never really grew out of it.

#  July 15: Blue

**Bushwick Blues**

When Tony was sixteen, there was this little bar near Knickerbocker Park that his dad’s young secretary would sneak him into.

Well. He wasn’t really sneaking. It was more like bribery, but there was also additional hush money involved, so it was kind of like sneaking. Anyway.

Andrea would get him inside, and he would surreptitiously drink his beer in a corner and watch all the Caribbean girls dance and talk. Sometimes one of the bartenders would drop him off a plate of fries, and sometimes Andrea’s boyfriend would sit with him for little bits at a time, but usually he was left alone. In all honesty it was kind of boring, but it was infinitely better than being stuck at the family mansion, listening to the silence of the house as his father worked and his mother stared at the garden through the kitchen window. 

The thing was that most of the people he knew didn’t seem like real people at all. His father was more like a caricature of a mad scientist or Inspector Gadget than a real person, and sometimes he wondered if his mom wasn’t actually some sort of robot woman that his dad created to keep him company. Like Frankenstein’s monster, except pretty and likable. Well, maybe. He never actually read Frankenstein, but. Whatever. The point is that even though the bar is boring at least the people are real. 

Most times that Andrea brings him, she also drives him home, or her boyfriend does, but occasionally they forget that he’s there and leave without him, so he has to take the L train home. And it’s on one of these days, where he’s had a plate of fries, one bad beer and two really good sodas, and was subsequently left behind at a bar he never should have been in, that he finds himself looking at a gorgeous boy as he rides the train home. He’s sixteen years old. He’s kissed a girl but never done anything else, and kissing Hope Pym did not make his gut feel all fluttery the way looking at boys does. The way looking at this particular boy does. 

In the future, when Tony is in his twenties and thirties, striking up conversation with an attractive stranger will be second nature to him, will feel natural and easy and often even fun. But right in this moment he’s an awkward, gangly genius who’s spent too much of his childhood alone and who doesn’t know how to relate to people. Also, there’s this little, neurological part of his brain that is convinced that if he talks to a stranger without his dad’s security team around he’ll be kidnapped, but that’s neither here nor there. So he just looks at this guy from across the aisle of the train, looks at his curly hair and his plump, pink lips and the curve of his brow. 

And then the guy looks up and catches Tony staring at him. Tony blushes and jerks his gaze away, but he still watches the guy in the reflection of the window. The train car is nearly empty, and the guy looks around as if he’s looking for whoever it was that Tony was actually looking at. Tony wants to stop looking, but now the guy is looking back at him, maybe even, like, checking him out? And he really wants to say something. Well, he’d rather if the guy said something first, but. You know. He just wants someone to say something.

Aunty Peggy says that Starks are lucky bastards, and maybe she’s right because the guy looks at him, bites his lip, takes a breath, and then he says, “Hey.”

Hey. Just a simple hey, but Tony wants to taste that guy’s voice. He wants to soak in it. “Hey,” he says back, and he scoots away from the window, gets a little closer. It’s clear that neither of them really know what to say, but Tony still wants to talk to him. “I’m Tony,” he settles on eventually.

The guy kind of smiles, and he looks a little shy, but not as shy as Tony feels. “I’m Bruce.” He sticks his hand out, and they shake, and Tony scoots a little closer still. They don’t say much else to each other, but before Bruce gets off the train he pulls a pen out of his jeans pocket and writes his phone number on the back of an empty pack of cigarettes that he takes out of the backpack at his feet. 

Tony can feel himself blushing, and he grins. “If I call, will you pick up?”

Bruce smiles back, and it’s soft, and he says, “My mom might, but it won’t be an issue.”

“Tonight?”

Bruce kind of chuckles. “I’ll be home.” And then he gives a small wave as he steps off the train, and Tony lifts his hand in response, and he thinks about Bruce’s voice all the rest of the way home.

*

Bruce lives in Bushwick, but he takes Tony all around Chelsea and Greenwich Village. They hold hands, and Bruce never asks about Tony’s family, and rarely ever mentions his. He’s seventeen and beautiful, and Tony never feels safer than when Bruce has his arm around him. He moved to New York a few years ago and was somehow adopted by a gay couple out in Brooklyn. Tony doesn’t know the whole story, except that now Steve’s sick and Bruce is always worried about it. 

“All my friends are dying,” Bruce murmurs one night as they sit on a park bench outside of Bruce’s favourite late night cafe. “And it’s scary, but I. I still want...” He trails off, his eyes distant and his lips all worried and bitten, and Tony kisses him, and he just relaxes.

The thing is, Bruce acts like a tough guy. Sometimes Tony will go weeks without seeing him, and the next time that he does Bruce will have a split lip or a black eye or a broken nose. He gets into fights with strangers who say mean things to his friends, and he usually gets his ass kicked but sometimes he doesn’t. The thing is, when it’s all over and Tony asks him why, why is his first reaction to throw a punch instead of walking away, Bruce cries. He’s not so tough on the inside. 

Tony likes to act tough too, likes to snark and posture and laugh in the face of hurt feelings or physical threats. He acts invincible, untouchable, and with Bruce around to deck dickheads sometimes he can almost believe that it’s true. But then he goes home, and Bruce isn’t around to defend him from Howard’s blank stares or Maria’s long silences, and he knows that he’s not so tough on the inside either.

They make quite the pair, Bruce and Tony.

Tony’s not out, not the way Bruce is, and none of his friends or his family knows. Jarvis knows, but Jarvis loves him so it isn’t an issue. Bruce says that he’s not interested in being in any closet, that being someone’s secret isn’t his idea of a good time, but he kisses Tony quiet when Tony tries to point out that he is, in fact, currently in a relationship with someone who is keeping him a secret.

“It’s different,” Bruce whispers. “You’re just a kid. You’re gonna be important to the whole world one day. You’re the exception.”

Tony doesn’t really know what love is, and he doesn’t think Bruce knows either, but. He’s pretty sure that this is it. Steve says, “I met Buck when I was your age,” and he pats Tony on the head as his eye linger on Bruce. Steve and Bucky are ancient and have been together for a million years, so when he says things like that Tony can’t help but hope.

When Steve dies, Bruce basically disappears. Tony, with no idea of who else to turn to, shows up on Bucky’s doorstep. When he’s let into the house Bruce is already there, asleep on the couch. And then Bruce turns eighteen, and then it’s Christmas, and then somehow, for some reason, it’s all over.

*

Bucky says that Bruce is just acting like the tough, stupid man that he thinks he should be. Bucky says that Steve passing really shook Bruce up, that Bruce feels weird about being eighteen when Tony is still sixteen, and that Bruce has been through a lot that requires careful consideration that Bruce hasn’t given it yet. That Bruce is starting to address some of those issues now. But it all just males Tony angry, so he stops going to Bucky’s.

He stops thinking about Bruce.

Or, well. That’s what he tells himself.

Now he prowls around Chelsea alone, with no one to hold his hand or make him feel safe or fight his fights, and sometimes he sees Bruce with other, older guys. Each time he does, he can’t help but think,  _ that guy has nothing to offer Bruce that I can’t offer him _ , and then he hates himself a little, and then he leaves. Bruce might be eighteen now, but he’s still a kid, and he’s still not tough. 

Eventually Tony stops going anywhere that Bruce might be. He starts hanging around his old friends more, and just to be spiteful he goes back to kissing girls. Hope Pym asks him where he’s been and doesn’t bother to listen to the lie that he comes up with, and James Rhodes clasps him on the back and introduces him to a girl named Virginia.

When Rhodey is thirty two and Virginia is thirty one and a half and letting everyone in the world call her Pepper, they’ll get married and have a baby girl named Arizona. But that’s sixteen years away. Right now, Tony kisses Virginia and she puts a hand on his face when she kisses him back, and she laughs and his good jokes and shoves his shoulder at his bad ones, and when he’s seventeen they have sex for the first time. 

He thinks of Bruce. He closes his eyes. He kisses her.

He’s still not tough, either.

*

After his parents die, Tony and Pepper and Rhodey all move out to California together, to live the adventurous lives that they were never allowed in New York. Tony, twenty one and carefree, sold all his shares of his father’s company to Obadiah. Now he surfs a lot, eats sushi and burgers on the beach, and tells his best friend and his girlfriend that he’s gay. Pepper slaps him but then hugs him and cries so hard that she can’t breathe, and Rhodey says, “Shit, is that what you were hiding in ‘87? You had a fucking boyfriend,” and then they all move on.

Tony dates a guy named Tiberius and it takes him longer than it should have to work out that Tiberius is a fucking dick. Sometimes, when he’s angry and can’t figure out why he can’t find a nice guy, he kisses starlets in the back of Hollywood clubs. He’s still Tony Stark after all, still rich and attractive even if he sold his claim to fame. On those nights, Pepper picks him up and takes him home, and Rhodey tucks him in like a parent does their child. 

*

He’s surprised when he gets an email from Gabe Jones, who he used to know back when he was a little twink following his wannabe tough guy boyfriend around Chelsea. And he’s even more surprised by the contents of the email.

Bucky’s funeral is going to be on a Saturday out in Brooklyn. Tony feels like he shouldn’t miss it.

He doesn’t recognize most of the people that are there, but the few that he does he hasn’t spoken to in, like, ten years, so he doesn’t speak to them now. New York is different but also the same, and when the funeral’s over he finds himself on the L train. He gets off in Bushwick without even thinking, and he tries to find that bar near Knickerbocker Park. It’s not called Knickerbocker Park anymore, and that trips him up a little, but he gets over it. He wanders through the park until he finds a nice bench, and then he sits, and then he breathes.

Or, he tries to.

He’s still not very tough.

Someone sits beside him and he wants to scream, but his first reaction is to say something snarky and inflammatory so he goes to do that, but when he looks up he pauses. Because the person sitting beside him is Bruce. The stupid wannabe tough guy boyfriend that he used to follow around.

It’s kinda like the night they met all over again, both of them looking at each other and wanting to say something but not knowing where to start.

“It was nice of you to come back for Buck,” Bruce finally murmurs, and his voice is rough and his eyes are tired. He seems old for twenty eight.

“I didn’t see you there,” Tony says quietly. He’d looked. He’s not sure he would have said anything had he seen Bruce, but he didn’t see him, so.

“Yeah, I. Ah. I’m not very comfortable in churches. I spent yesterday with his family though, and Gabe told me he saw you.”

They don’t really talk after that, just sit beside each other quietly. But unlike that night when they met, this time it’s Bruce that scoots closer. He rests his forehead on Tony’s shoulder and he shakes a little, and Tony can’t tell whether it’s because Bruce is cold or if he’s crying. He drapes his arm around him anyway, and it feels backwards, but they don’t move.

“I think about you a lot,” Bruce whispers.”

“You abandoned me.”

“I know.”

“You didn’t even tell me why.”

“I know.”

Tony was angry for a long time, but he isn’t any more. Kids fall in love with stupid people and do stupid things. Kids don’t know what to do with love at all, and sometimes Tony wonders whether Bruce ever even knew that he was loved in the first place. Sometimes Steve would say things that made Tony think that Bruce never felt love before, but then Steve died and those things stopped being said.

It hurts him now, to think that maybe Bruce never knew. “I loved you,” he whispers, and his eyes prickle. 

Bruce burrows into his side and his voice is muffled when he mumbles, “I loved you too.”

All Tony can think is,  _ I know _ . And they’re both crying. It’s almost funny. They’re still just two kids who aren’t very tough, even after all this time. 


	6. Goodnight and I Love You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Six: Illuminate  
> It's been a long time coming, but finally Brielle and Tony are seeing eye to eye.

#  July 16: Illuminate 

**Goodnight and I Love You**

He comes over to her house after a long day of meetings, his hair dishevelled and his tie already loose around his neck. “I brought burgers!” he chirps as he kicks his shoes off in the foyer and beelines for the kitchen, and she smiles fondly at his back before trailing behind him. He digs around in her refrigerator until he pulls out the bottle of white wine he left behind last time, a sound of satisfaction softly emanating from behind his smiling lips.

“White’s not for red meat,” she says to him even as she brushes past him to get glasses, even though he knows more about wine pairings than she knows about alcohol at all.

“Um, excuse you, any wine’s for whenever you want and burgers are always good with booze.” He’s had a tough day. She can tell by the set of his shoulders and the fact that he still hasn’t even taken off his suit jacket, but he’s still nothing more than playful with her. He bumps the fridge door closed with his hip and deposits the wine on the kitchen island, then reaches into the grease stained takeout bag and snags a fry. “Anyway, white is good with chicken, and you got a chicken burger, so find something else to complain about.”

He pours the wine in the glasses she deposits beside him, and he doesn’t even make too much fun of her for the fact that they’re mismatched and not meant for wine at all. “Shut up,” she says anyway, bumping her hip against his before rounding to the other side of the island and grabbing a roll of paper towel. “You broke all my wine glasses last Christmas.”

“That’s right! I owe you new ones.”

She feels like a stupid cliche. Every time she reads a book or watches a movie where the straight woman and straight man best friend set sudden fall in love she laughs, but here she is, trying to pretend that she’s not hopelessly in love with her best friend in order to preserve their near decade of friendship. He’s made a plate out of paper towel and has dumped his fries carelessly onto it, and he’s unconcerned about any burger juice or sauce that is dripping onto the skin of his wrist. He catches her eyes on him and thinks nothing of it, pushing the bag toward her. His grin is still boyish, just the same as it was when he was twenty two and academically running circle around her. “Take off your jacket; Pep’s gonna freak if she needs to send your suit to be dry-cleaned again.”

“Yes ma’am,” he mutters before wiping his hands on the brown fast food napkins and slipping out of his jacket, depositing it on the stool beside him. “Between you and Pepper, it’s like I never got rid of my nannies.” He’s smiling though, and he pushes the bag towards her again. He’s nearly finished eating and she hasn’t even started yet, but that’s par for the course. 

“Brielle. Eat. C’mon.”

She doesn’t ask him about his day. His good luck business tie is hanging around his neck like a noose, and he’s taken off his watch at some point before he got here. These are signs she learned to read as easily as she can read any tension in his body and all the lines in his face. So instead she bites into her chicken burger and mumbles, “I texted you a video about dogs earlier.”

“You did?” He lights up and scrambles for his phone. “Oh my God, you did!”

She wonders what all the people who look up to him as some sort of cold, staunch business mogul and tech wizard would think of Tony Stark if they saw him like this, loose-limbed and laughing at videos of puppies tripping over themselves. This is the Tony that befriended her way back when, this is the Tony that she loves.

Eventually they make their way out of the kitchen and into the little living room she’s got. Her home is a small condo with little space but lots of windows, and in the four or five steps it takes Tony to get to the couch he’s rolled up both his sleeves, lost his tie, and opened the first few buttons of his shirt.

“Movie?”

She glances outside. The sky is somewhere between pink and purple, and there’s a breeze. She shrugs. “Do you want your sweatpants?”

He looks at her for a second before he laughs. “I left a sleepover bag here last time, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, it’s under the bathroom sink.”

He grabs her by the shoulders and plants a big, wet kiss on her forehead. “You’re the best,” he tells her enthusiastically before practically leaping up the stairs.

The thing is that yeah, she’s absolutely in love with Tony Stark, her best friend, and it’s a total cliche, but all the movies get it wrong. The movies make it seem like it’s all pathetic pining and one sided awkward silences and this pain that you can’t talk about with anyone because it’s the one thing your best friend can never know about. But they’re wrong. Being in love with Tony, even secretly, has never hurt her. She utterly adores him, and nothing in the world feels better than knowing that he’s always no more than a phone call away, that he comes to her after his bad days knowing that she’ll cheer him up, that he’d rather be here with her than out with anyone else. She doesn’t need him to be in love with her. She’s already so special to him. 

Tony zips back down the stairs and snags her around the waist. He drags her down onto the couch with him and props his feet up on the coffee table, his arm draped over her shoulder and his cheek pressed against the top of her head. “Movie?” he asks again.

They end up picking some stupid comedy that she doesn’t pay attention to, and he doesn’t pay attention to. She looks out the window, watches the sky, and he falls asleep against her side as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. She lets a hand comb through his hair, and he snuffles against her, and she smiles. “Tony,” she whispers softly. “Tony, do you want me to pull out the couch?”

He doesn’t respond for a few moments and she thinks about prodding him more awake, but he eventually slumps away from her and brings both his hands up to rub at his face. “I better not.” His voice is rough with exhaustion. “I’ve got a couple more meetings in the morning and a deadline for R & D. You always let me sleep in when I stay here.” He pauses for another long moment before reaching out to her, his fingers playing with one of the curls that fall around her face. “Your glasses are crooked; are the hinges loose again? You should just get new ones.”

“It’s not my fault you’re always so tired,” she mutters before swatting Tony’s hand away. “You driving home?”

“I took the train.”

“You hate the train.”

“I hate my new driver more. Pepper doesn’t let me drive by myself anymore.”

Brielle laughs. “Well, the last time you were in a car unsupervised you drove across the border and disappeared for three days.”

“That was one time!” he protests. “And anyway, I brought her back a really expensive stuffed bear from Whistler.”

“She told me. He’s got his own skis.”

“He does! I thought she’d like it. And you can’t be mad, I got you the scarf that you love on that trip. The green one with the thingies.”

This is true. She pets his hair absently, watching his face, and he sighs, presses his head into her touch for a moment. She knows that it’s late, knows that if he’s planning to take the train home he’d better take off pretty quick. It’s a Sunday after all, and transit service is slower than it is during the week. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay?”

He tenses. “I never said I didn’t want to stay.” He sits up and looks at her, and his eyes are dark, intense. The last time he looked at her just like this they were twenty six, drunk, and he tried to kiss her. She’d turned her head at the last minute, and they both laughed so hard, repeating  _ what the fuck?  _ over and over between long swallows of vodka. He studies her with that same gaze now, but they’re both sober, older, and she wouldn’t turn away from him this time. Not again. He doesn’t move to kiss her though, he just stares at her. “I’d rather stay, but.”

But. It goes unfinished. Being Tony Stark when he’d really rather just be Tony Anyone Else is hard on him, demands a lot from him, and they both know that. She doesn’t push. His arm is still around her shoulders somehow, and she slips out from underneath it. “Here, go get changed. Leave your sweats here for next time, okay? It’s too cold for being out in just a t-shirt.”

She wanders back into the kitchen and begins tidying up, and she hears him shuffling around upstairs before he passes by her towards the door.

“We still wanna go to the night market on next week?” he calls from the foyer, and she can hear him struggling to keep his balance as he tries to get his shoes back on. It’s all par for the course.

“Yeah, if you still want to. Clint was telling me they have some new food vendors this year. And there was a Mr. Shawarma food truck there last week.”

“Fuck yeah, Mr. Shawarma! Kay, I’m out. Text me more dog videos tomorrow, otherwise I think I’ll die.” And then before she can bother to say anything she hears him leave, the deadbolt sliding and then the door slamming shut behind him as he leaves. She stands in the kitchen for a moment, her brow furrowed in thought. Nothing was different between them today, everything was normal, but right near the end there it sort of felt like there was a shift in him, like he saw something in her that he hadn’t before. She chews on her lower lip before shaking her head and collecting her recycling bin. If anything was off about Tony today it’s just because he was tired, and rightfully so. He’s been so busy lately.

As she enters the hall, she notices the outside light at the front door is still on and she frowns. It’s a motion sensor light, so unless someone’s out there or there’s an animal scurrying around there’s no reason for it to be on. She puts down the recycling and steps carefully up to the door, looking out the peephole. 

Tony’s still out there, standing on the front step and running his fingers through her hair.

She opens the door. “What are you doing?” she asks incredulously.

His body twitches, and he looks almost guilty for a second, but then he’s up the step and right in her space, his hands cupping her face. His eyelashes are dark and his skin looks pale in the yellow of the porch light. But his eyes are almost gleaming, and he’s looking at her with such, such... Oh. Oh, well. 

“I’d rather stay here,” he murmurs. “I know maybe it’s weird or... I mean I know most friends don’t do this but like. I’m in love with you, and I’d rather stay here and--”

The first time they kiss, they’re bathed in yellow light, and there are moths fluttering around off to their right, and Tony’s in his suit jacket with his watch and his tie tucked into his pocket. Loving Tony has never hurt her, not for one second, but this is still somehow better. She kisses him for long, drawn out moments, chastely and relieved, before she slowly pulls away. She doesn’t go far; her face is still in his hands after all, but she moves far enough back that she can look up at him. “Do you want to come inside?” she whispers, and his grin is boyish, just like it used to be back when they were in university. It takes years off his face.

He isn’t Tony Stark when he nods his head, isn’t thinking about the meetings he has in the morning or the deadlines he’s going to have to rush to meet. Instead, he’s just Tony, the Tony she met when she was twenty one a new to this side of the country, the Tony she fell in love with. “Yeah. Yeah I... I’d like that. Brielle. I’d like that a lot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never genderbent Bruce before! But she'd be adorable.


End file.
